Telemedicine in Rural Communities

Imagine you live in a small rural community in northern Montana with no more than a thousand residents, each of whom lives miles from the next. Your child becomes ill with a sudden high fever and you don’t know what to do. Just five years ago, this situation would have necessitated an hour drive to the nearest hospital emergency room, or a call to a volunteer-run ambulatory services center. Now, patients have the option to receive care via telemedicine instead, improving the level of care and making healthcare accessible to more people in rural areas.

Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status. (ATA) Sometimes referred to as “telehealth,” telemedicine can be accomplished via email, smart phone, two-way video, and many other forms of communication technology. It can be as simple as two physicians discussing a case via cell phone, or as complex as using video-conferencing to facilitate a real-time consultation between medical providers in two different countries. (Medical News) The main benefits of telemedicine derive from its flexibility—any physician can participate in one of its several different user options. The practice has been lauded by many in the medical community for increasing care options to patients and cost-effectiveness. Medicaid guidelines recognize the cost difference between face-to-face consultations or examinations and telemedicine, and incentivize the practice through its coverage levels. (Medicaid)

Telemedicine has had a widespread effect globally, especially in rural communities that lack a brick-and-mortar healthcare presence. Rural populations consistently face obstacles to healthcare that urban areas do not encounter. Challenging issues such as a lack of healthcare professionals, physical distance between providers, and a lack of emergency facilities have created a care gap between the people in these two regions. (Stanford School of Medicine) The majority of the problems stem a deficiency of healthcare professionals per patient in rural areas. According to Stanford University’s Rural Health Factsheet, , about 20% of American’s population resides in rural communities, but less than 10% of physicians practice in rural areas.

Telemedicine helps correct that imbalance by ‘bringing’ physicians into the rural communities in which they are needed via electronic media. Before telemedicine, a patient may have had to wait two or more days for a physician to travel to his town, or had to travel long distances to the doctor. Now, the same patient can set see his doctor via Skype when it’s most convenient or most needed. (Healthcare IT News) Additionally, because web communication software is relatively inexpensive, the cost to the patient is negligible.

Telemedicine has also led to improvement with in-home monitoring. Clinical observations or costly hospital stays are avoided when a patient is given a device to monitor his status at home which uploads all relevant information to the monitoring physician. This allows the patient to be at home, even if his home is far away from the nearest medical facility. At-home monitoring also helps hospitals reduce readmission rates. (Time) Fewer readmissions means less billing to Medicare and Medicaid, which reduces the cost of these programs.

Possibly the biggest boon to rural communities is the increased availability of specialists. In locations where physicians of any type are scarce, finding available specialized care, even types as basic as emergency pediatric care, can be difficult or near impossible. (University of California) Telemedicine allows specialized physicians to consult with other physicians on difficult cases—in some situations, they can even virtually examine the patient via video conference and electronic medical records. In the case of emergency pediatric care, telemedicine consultations have been proven to greatly improve the quality of care for children treated in rural emergency rooms. (Kaiser Health News, NTCA)

Threre are ways to even further increase the level of health in rural communities via telemedicine. A 2011 report from the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization gives eight strategies to improve further the reach and abilities of telemedicine in rural communities. (UnitedHealth Group) Among the suggestions made were expanding broadband connectivity, offering education to physicians on how to incorporate telemedicine into their practice, and updating regulations to allow the practice across state lines.